KOUGA Speaker Hatting Bornman has made another appeal to Identity Document (ID) applicants to visit the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) office in Humansdorp to check if their smart cards have arrived.
This comes after the Department released the latest figures of uncollected IDs, with at least 367 smart cards still unclaimed by the end of August.
Bornman chairs the Department of Home Affairs/Kouga Stakeholders Forum, an organ mandated with helping DHA improve its service to the public.
“We also noted, sadly, that it was mostly young adults, from 18 years and a bit older, who were most negligent in following up on their applications,” he said.
“These are people who are entering a new phase of responsibility in life, such as studying or seeking work, and they would definitely need an ID to pursue such ventures.
“The forum received a list of names of applicants who still need to collect their smart cards and we will use this to try to mobilise them to go to the department.
“Applicants must collect their smart cards personally and cannot send a third party, as fingerprint verification is done to ensure that the ID is given to the correct person.”
Applicants receive an SMS to confirm that they have applied for an ID at the point of application and would usually receive another message once their smart card has arrived.
According to the Department of Home Affairs website (www.dha.gov.za), applicants can receive SMS updates on the progress of their applications by simply sending an SMS with the word “ID”, followed by the ID number to 32551.
SMS’s are charged at R1 each.
